Today I am going to write the first instalment from three dips and sauce recipes that have been ‘cooking’ in my head this past few weeks.

The weather has been horrendously hot here out in the East Coast (and the rest of USA), and this really takes out any desire of cooking or eating anything that is hot. Mr. K and I on a daily basis look for vegetables, but we got a bit bored eating them plain like rabbits. While salad remains an interesting option, I felt that it is time to pull out another trick for the table and make some dips for our vegetable sticks.

Bagna Cauda came to mind – let’s make that – but heck, I cannot find any anchovies.

The day is so hot, and I cannot even be bothered driving to Costco to get more anchovies. Surely there is something else I can conjure. Hmm, what to do? What can I make from things readily available in my pantry?

I opened the fridge and two things caught my attention – white miso and some umeboshi. My mind travelled to my Japan Summer festivals, where you can get cold cucumber with miso paste on top, or radish sticks with chopped umeboshi (sour plum) on top.

Eureka!

This is it. I should make the dip that Mr. K loves so much that every time I put it on the table he said, “This is my favorite”.

Put all ingredients in a small food processor. Whizz on low for 30 seconds, and another 15 seconds on high until it reaches the consistency you like.

Serve with vegetable sticks of your choosing. We usually use celery, carrots, cucumber, radish, lettuce, paprika, etc. Really, whatever you have on hand!

Note:

*There are several different types of miso. White miso (‘shiro miso’/白みそ) is one of the most commonly found miso in the supermarket, along with the red miso. White miso has the mildest flavour, unlike its red counterpart and doesn’t overpower others. I prefer to get white miso with fish stock already added, you can see the packaging that says ‘dashi iri’/だし入り written. This has a certain ‘umami’ that adds to a wholesome flavour in the dish. For more information concerning miso, please visit this link.

**If you don’t have access to umeboshi, you can replace with 2~3 Tbsps. of vinegar. I would add to it one tbsp at a time, check the flavour and see if the acidity match what you’re looking for. I like my dipping sauce on the sourest level because I am not a big fan of mayonnaise flavour. However the mayonnaise is needed to make the dip creamy, so I like to bury the mayonnaise flavour with a lot of umeboshi or vinegar.

Finally I am ready to just dig myself out of this rut and start getting my cook-writer hat on again!

New York and New Jersey is the place that I now call home. Now that it’s summer and Farmers’ Market abound on different days of the week, I am blessed with boundless access to bounty that in previous life was pretty hard to come by reasonably.

Today I am going to share with you a dish that I’ve made several times since 2012. I saw Michela Chiappa made it in their BBC Channel 4 “Simply Italian” program back then and was very happy to learn just how easy it is to make your own fresh pasta. Now the cook show is history, but the learning could still and definitely should be put to good use.

I was able to obtain fresh organic bounty of spinach bunch and sage at one of the nearby Farmer’s Market, and once again my Atlas pasta maker is out of storage!

Without further ado, here is Lasagne Verdi with Sage + Walnut Pesto for your enjoyment.

Place the spinach in a medium sized pan with a splash of water and heat on a medium-low heat. Place the lid on top and cook the spinach for 3-5 minutes until wilted. Remove the spinach from the pan and place in a colander, then allow to cool and carefully squeeze all the water out of the spinach. Once the water is all out of the spinach place into a food processor and whizz quickly. If your don’t have a food processor, then finely chop it.

To make the spinach dough, add the flour, 2 eggs and spinach to a large bowl, mixing well to combine all the ingredients. If the dough is too dry add the final egg, yolk first, then white, mixing between additions to ensure all ingredients are well combined and to avoid the dough becoming too wet (I’ve always used 3 eggs whenever I make this). Once the dough has come together transfer to a floured surface and begin kneading with your hands until you have a play-dough texture. If your dough is still crumbly (too dry) add a teaspoon of olive oil. If the dough sticks to your hands (too wet) add a little extra flour. Cover with cling film and rest for 30 minutes. This is the ideal time to make your pesto and béchamel.

To make your pesto: whizz all your ingredients together in a food processor. Ideally you need your paste to be to a consistency that can be spread easily over the pasta. You may need to add more oil to get it to this consistency (I added about ¼ cup of extra virgin olive oil).

To make the béchamel sauce, get a large non-stick saucepan and place on a medium- low heat with the butter. Once melted whisk in the flour to form a paste, then slowly add the milk bit by bit, continuously whisking until thickened. Add your parmesan and season to taste, then put to one side until ready to layer up the lasagne. Don’t worry if your béchamel goes cold.

Once the dough is rested, take tennis ball-sized amounts of the dough and squash it flat with your fingers (remember to keep the rest of your dough covered with the cling film so it doesn’t go dry and crusty). Take your flattened tennis ball-sized piece of dough and push it through the pasta roller on the widest setting. Fold into thirds, then repeat 3 times. Once you have a rough square shape, start working it through the machine, taking it down one setting at a time, until the last but one setting (the maximum on Atlas pasta maker is 7, but I always stop at 6). If your pasta is too sticky, it won’t go through smoothly, so add a little flour to each side before you put it through the roller.

Cut the pasta into strips which will fit your lasagne tray, approximately 30cm in length. Keep your sheets of pasta on a tray on a clean cloth to prevent them sticking.

All of the above can be prepared several hours before making your lasagne. Just remember to keep your strips of fresh pasta laid out individually under plastic wrap so they don’t stick together or dry up.

When you’re ready to cook your lasagne, preheat the oven to 180°C/350 F. Make sure you are using an ovenproof dish (we suggest one that is about 6 cm deep and rectangular in shape) and always start with a layer of béchamel or a layer of pesto at the bottom to stop the pasta burning. Then layer in this order: pasta layer (overlap the strips of pasta by 1cm but try not to let the pasta curl up the sides of the dish. The pieces can be cut to fit), pesto layer (1½ heaped tablespoons), béchamel layer (2 heaped tablespoons), mozzarella layer (scatter 1 handful evenly over the layer) and parmesan layer (1 handful sprinkled evenly over the layer). Repeat the above until you have completed 5 layers.

To garnish the lasagne, brush the sage leaves with some olive oil and arrange on top, then bake the lasagne for 25-30 minutes until the top is golden and bubbling slightly. Leave it stand for about 5-10 minutes before serving.

Michela Chiappa’s tips:

This lasagne can be done with normal plain pasta dough or even dried lasagne sheets if you are in a rush, although the green colour of the pasta does make it extra special. If so, ensure that the béchamel is runnier to give extra moisture to the dish when it is cooked and to make sure it doesn’t dry out

Try and get your pasta strips to be at least the length of your ovenproof dish and about 12cm wide; however this is simply to make your layering easier

The pasta doesn’t need to be very thin – it can be rolled to the second from last setting on the roller, or about 3 playing cards thick.

When you roll your pasta out, you can either store it on trays with a layer of cling film between each layer to stop them sticking, or hang it on coat hangers or a clothes horse. The main aim is not to let the pasta strips touch each other, otherwise they will start sticking and break apart when you try to separate them

We recommend you blanch your pasta in boiling water before layering; to do this, put the individual strip of pasta into boiling water for approximately 30 seconds (this does depends on how thick your pasta is but usually 30 seconds to 1 minute max). It should still have a bite to it but should be softened. Once blanched, dip them into cold water to stop them cooking and spread them on a clean tea-towel to get rid of the excess moisture.

If you have any leftover pesto, put it in a jar and cover it with olive oil to seal it. It will keep in your fridge for months and is great over a plate of pasta.

If you have any left over pasta, cut them into long ‘tagliatelle’ strips, air-dry them for 24 hours, then store in an air-tight container to be used at a later date.

Remember, green pasta doesn’t taste of spinach – the spinach simply dyes the pasta. A great way to get your kids to eat some greens!

Thank you so much for your orders last week! I hope you’ve enjoyed your Thursday dinners, as much as I have enjoyed making them.

Please see below the menu for this Thursday, February 5th:

This week’s menu will feature two very exciting new items for you to sample as below:

Telur Pindang | Indonesian Marbled Eggs

And also our well-loved Crunchy Lemon Whole Wheat Muffins!

Crunchy lemon Whole Wheat Muffins

As a reminder please note the below regarding pick-up and drop off:

Pick up: between 5 – 7 pm at MyOrangePot.com HQ in Yoyogi 4-chome (4 minutes walk from Sangubashi station or 30 seconds walk from Yoyogi 3-chome bus stop). Pick-up address will be informed when your order is confirmed

Drop off: between 7:15 – 7:45 pm. We will meet you at the JR Yoyogi Yamanote/Sobu line West gate

A friendly reminder: our last service for the first quarter in 2015 is Thursday, February 26. Until then I will post the weekly menu to www.myorangepot.com on Sundays in the morning and hope to hear from you by noon on Tuesdays.

Many of you have expressed interest in subscribing to a mailing list for the menu. Please kindly provide your e-mail address to myorangepot@gmail.com.

One of my early memories of my mother’s kitchen is recalling that my mother always puts aside the red onion (bawang merah/shallots) peel in a ‘besek’ (wicker basket) at the corner of the kitchen. When we kids helped her peeling the little tear-jerking little red things, she will call out to us,

“Save the peels and put it in the ‘besek’! Yes, all of them, don’t throw them out. We will use it to make Telur Pindang!”

Last Thursday, when I was cooking for #Weekly_Canteen, I can hear her voice saying the very thing to me. As I industrially proceeded in peeling about 100 red onions, I consciously put all the red onion peel aside. Little by little the peel mounted up and at the end of the process, I ended up with an equivalent of big udon bowl of red onion peel.

Now what?

The only correct answer to that question now is to then do what Mama says endlessly: make yourself some Telur Pindang! Pindang is an Indonesian traditional method to preserve food, usually employing fish (ikan) and eggs (telur). The technique is native to Java and Sumatra islands (two out of the big 5 islands in Indonesian archipelago). To pindang something is a cooking process where you boil the ingredients in certain spices – usually salt, soy sauce, teak leaves, or other spices. The process gives the food dark brown color and last longer compared to plainly boiled food.

Mama walked me through the process over text messages with her typical directions: with low heat boil some eggs with a lot of salt with red onion peel, salam leaves, guava leaves and you can also add some tea leaves to make the color really red. Crack the shells midway to create the marbly coloring and so the flavor could seep through.

When inquired how much of the ingredients I should use for how many eggs, her answer was simply,

“Ya dikira-kira saja…”

(loosely translated, “Just use your own judgement, just enough…”)

So, I take this as a challenge. Yesterday was a slushy snowy day in Tokyo, I took it as the perfect opportunity to spend indoors and make this little gems. I tried three different ways to finally come to the below recipe. For your benefit I have measured and timed it so you don’t need to go wild in doing the guessing game that Mama suggested. I have also adjusted the recipe to ingredients that are readily available in ethnic supermarkets in Japan (or non tropical countries).

From the point of water boiling, after 15 minutes, lift the eggs out and place in cold water

When cool enough to handle, using the back of a spoon gently crack the shells all over, creating a spider web looking cracks. Do not peel!

Return the eggs into the pot – check if you need to add water to make sure everything is in the brownish concoction

Continue to simmer (low heat!) for about 75~105 minutes, stir occasionally. Add some water when you feel the water is gone too quickly, the eggs need to be in the water to produce a rich web/marbly coloring.

When done, remove eggs from saucepan and place in cold water. Peel eggs now and, if possible, serve with Indonesian dishes like Mama’s Mie Goreng.

**Like me – where it’s close to impossible to score any teak leaves or guava leaves, then I resort to using tea. Make sure that the tea bags of your choice don’t have strong smell like earl grey so it does not over power the other ingredients when boiling. My personal preference is white or green tea. White tea has no strong smell but green tea produces a much brighter marble web.

Please note that since MyOrangePot’s #Weekly_Canteen is pretty much a one woman-show, there has been adjustments made to this service:

With the lack of (wo)manpower, we no longer provide delivery service, but you are most welcome to pick up your food at MyOrangePot.com HQ in Yoyogi 4-chome (4 minutes walk from Sangubashi station or 30 seconds walk from Yoyogi 3-chome bus stop) between 4:30 – 7:00 pm.

Pick-up address will be informed when your order is confirmed

Alternatively, we will provide a pick-up service at JR Yoyogi Station, between 7:15 – 7:45 pm. We will meet you at the JR Yamanote/Sobu line West gate

Last but not least, due to some pre-arranged travel plans, please be informed that the #Weekly_Canteen will be in service for a limited period of time. Our last service for the first quarter in 2015 is Thursday, February 26.

I just renewed my apartment contract again for 2015 and decided that since I’m not terribly busy anymore with work things, I should – for once and for all – take a close look to the many, many things which have taken space-hogging residence in my apartment. Somehow after 8 years in this apartment, my things have exponentially grown in volume, and although they came here with good reasons, a serious decluttering need to take place. The effort will be a huge undertaking, especially since it will require a steel emotion (e.g. standing strong to some emotional/guilt trip such as… “Awww, but so-and-so got this for me somewhere”, “Ah! Surely I can fix it if I take it to the service man — something you’ve told yourself for at least 5 years –, “But, but, but, it was from that time I was in Greece…”, etc. ).

My pantry is no exception to this. I’m going through the drawers and shelves with an iron fist. If it is already expired – chuck it. If it’s almost expiring and you have multiple containers – donate it to a food drive, give it to the hungry homeless people around the neighbourhood. If there are things that looks remotely interesting, souvenirs from some holidays, etc, well maybe keep some, but anything outdated must go.

In this line of thinking, I have also decided to not buy anything for the pantry anymore unless it is fresh produce and pantry staples like flour or rice etc. In this raid, I came across a large collection of quinoa, couscous, dal (red lentils), dried chick peas, all sorts of legumes and lastly… I found some BROWN LENTILS!

Oh yay! I totally forgot I have a bag of it. Ho ho ho! I just came across a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s “Plenty” for pulses/legumes that I’ve been intrigued to try. whilst it’s paired with broiled eggplant in the book, I am pretty convince that this would also work very well with other main dish like grilled fish, poultry or meats.

Yeah, I think it’s OK to postpone the decluttering mission to another day. It is now time to play in the kitchen!

Lentils with broiled eggplant

As mentioned above, the recipe in the book is pairing it with broiled eggplant as below, but I have paired it with some grilled salmon, braised lamb shanks, and simple grilled steaks. I will write a follow up post on the braised lamb shanks at a latter date.

Adapted from “Plenty” by Yotam Ottolenghi

For the eggplants:

Tools: griller net

Total cook time: 5 minutes preparation, 25 cooking and waiting

Ingredients

8 small Japanese eggplants (about 15-20 cm long each)

2 Tbsp red-wine vinegar

salt and blackpepper

Directions

Grill the eggplant over a gas grill, directly on top of fire, rotating it around until the skin is completely charred, about 10 minutes.

Let the eggplant cool and peel off the charred skin completely. (Tip: I often put the charred eggplant in a plastic bag after grilling to let it cool down and can peel the eggplant very easily). Depending on the type of eggplant, some can contain quite a lot of liquid. If that is the case, then leave to drain for at least 15 minutes. Afterward season with plenty of salt and pepper and 1/2 Tbsp of the vinegar. Set aside.

Do in batches to ensure you make use of the entire open fire coverage

For the lentils

Tools: saucepan/soup pot

Total cook time: 10 minutes preparation, 30 minutes cook time

Ingredients

1 cup small brown lentils (such as Puy or Castelluccio), rinsed

3 small carrots, peeled

1 celery stalks and leaves

1 bay leaf

1 tsp dried thyme

1/2 white onion

3 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra to finish

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 tsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp chopped cilantro (the original recipe suggested to also add 1 Tbsp of chopped parsley and dill)

2 Tbsp yogurt (note: the original recipe asked for creme fraiche)

Directions (While the eggplants are being cooked…)

Place the lentils in a medium saucepan. Cut one carrot and half a celery stalk into large chunks and throw them in. Add the bay leaf, thyme, and onion (don’t chop it, keep it in half. I chopped the onion in the first try, and it went soggy and made it very difficult to pick through afterwards). Cover with plenty of water and bring to the boil. Simmer on low heat for up to 25 minutes (or until lentils are tender), skimming away the froth from the surface from time to time.

Drain in a sieve/colander. Remove and discard the carrot, celery, bay leaf, thyme and onion bits. Transfer the lentils to a mixing bowl. Add the rest of the vinegar, 2 Tbsp of olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper, stir and set aside somewhere warm (I actually put the lentils back in the now empty saucepan).

Cut the remaining carrot and celery (stalks and leaves bits) into 1 cm dice and mix with the tomatoes, remaining oil, sugar and some salt. Spread in an ovenproof dish (best to be pre-sprayed in olive oil spray) and cook in the oven for about 20 minutes (temperature was 180C), or until the carrot is tender but still firm.

Add the cooked vegetables to the warm lentils, followed by the chopped herbs and stir gently. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon the lentils onto serving plates. Pile some eggplant in the center of each portion and top it with a dollop of yogurt. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil.

Serves 4

]]>https://myorangepot.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/lentils-with-broiled-eggplant/feed/0LentilstaikotariLentils 3LentilsDo in batches to ensure you make use of the entire open fire coverageSpicy dal + carrot souphttps://myorangepot.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/spicy-dal-carrot-soup/
https://myorangepot.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/spicy-dal-carrot-soup/#respondSun, 14 Dec 2014 08:44:16 +0000http://myorangepot.com/?p=9177

It’s that time of the year again, when every morning you wake up with a slight shiver since the morning air is a little on the cold side. Or when you go to bed, you want to lay under layers of blankets, wrap yourself up in a snuggie. And when it comes dinner time, the first thing that comes to mind is to have soup, soup and more soup.

Last month I spent about a month in the East Coast of United States. What the East Coast residents call the Fall, is what we in Tokyo call the deep Winter. I experienced more -5C ~ -7C days in a month than the whole Winter long in Tokyo! As a remedy to this chilly weather, I resort to having soup in all sorts of shapes and flavours, ranging from: Soto Madura (Indonesia’s Madura island beef soup) – I made this one, turkey noodle soup (also made this one), chicken noodle soup, minestrone, Chinese sweet corn and chicken soup, sweet and sour soup, Peruvian seafood marinara soup, chili con carne, lobster bisque, chicken dumpling soup and so much more.

Upon returning to Tokyo, Winter is in full gear. I am on a serious mission to declutter my apartment and use up things in my pantry. I came across a few bags of dal (red lentils) and suddenly bells ringing in my head… “Dal and carrot soup to warm cold winter meals!” I have this go-to-recipe from my vegetarian cookbook that I’d like to document here and share with you.

1 1/4 cups milk (can be replaced with soy milk or almond milk to make a vegan version)

2 Tbsp chopped cilantro

Optional: unsweetened yogurt, to serve

Spices

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 fresh red chile pepper, chopped

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

Directions:

Wash and rinse lentils in a strainer (or you can get a pre-rinsed version, so you could skip this step)

In a soup pot, heat up the olive oil and sauté the chopped onions and garlic until fragrant

Drain the lentils and add to the onion and garlic mix, add carrots, tomatoes and 4 cups of vegetable stock

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until the vegetables and lentils are tender

For the spices, heat the olive oil in a small pan. Add the cumin, ground coriander, chili and turmeric and fry over a low heat for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice. Season with salt to taste

Bring the soup into a cooler temperature and add the spices from step 5 and process the soup in batches in a blender or food processor. (I have a rather large blender that could process hot food immediately in one go. However if you don’t have one, make sure to do it in batches)

Return the soup to the saucepan, add the remaining 1 cup of vegetable stock and simmer over a low heat for 10 minutes

Add the milk, taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Stir in the chopped cilantro and reheat gently. Serve hot with a drizzle of yogurt

It’s been a while since a typhoon/cyclone/ tropical storm at this scale hit Japan. Very unaptly, the ever powerful Man-Yi decided to visit on one of Japan’s 3-day weekend in September. My hopes and dreams to hit the beach this Summer were crushed because of the very unbecoming sporadic rain on Sunday Keiro-no-hi, and the very strong wind woke me up at ungodly 5 am this morning.

Ugh.

Seeing on Facebook, friends were busy going about their day on Sunday, despite the rain. There were all sorts of festivals going on in celebration of Keiro-no-hi (Respect for the Aged Day).

Hmm… maybe I should follow suit and check out what Yoyogi Hachimangu has to offer for their elderly citizens.

But then I thought otherwise. What if, for a change, I stay home and ride the bad weather indoors and cook stuff out of my pantry without any trip to the stores. After all I’ve been out everyday for work much of the month, never home more than 10 hours on any given day – and that includes sleeping! My groceries are not going to start cooking themselves, and I’ll be damned if I don’t use them since they are wonderful organic products.

Two days ago, I had the good sense to soak 500 grams of Hokkaido soybeans before I went to bed. By the time I woke up on Sunday morning the batch was ready for some de-hulling. Nothing like the present to start making some tempeh. A few months ago, I stumbled across a Youtube post by Notzarella. Ali Dark there showed a method on how to de-hull soybeans using a food processor’s blunt blade. The man is a genius. A process that normally took about 2 hours before was cut down into only 30-minutes at most. How’s that for efficiency? The soybeans finally were boiled and by the time I wrote this message, 3 pm on Monday, they have been fermenting away with the tempeh starter in past 36 hours, almost ready for cutting!

After 36 hours of fermentation

Next in line is one of my favorite cakes from Harry East Wood’s cookbook – Red Velvet Beetroot Cake. Harry Eastwood is known for her restless attempt to put a healthy spin on things that ordinarily would be very heavily laden with processed products, and replace them with vegetables. It is really a brilliant way to keep things natural and organic and very sneaky to get kids eat more veggies.

A slice of goodness

My friend Hideo grows delicious beetroots, among other delicious organic things in his green house @Mukade Mansion. I completely forgot that I have 4 beetroots in my pantry from the last shipment, untouched, and on the verge of getting old. If you live in Japan you know how hard it is to find beetroots, and when you do – you have to pay dearly for it, too. So I am not about to let perfectly delicious organic beetroot go to waste. I boiled two and eat them as a salad with feta cheese for lunch and used the other two for my red velvet cake.

So… you know how they say there is always a silver lining behind a very raucous-weathered day? In typhoon Man-Yi, I found tempeh, beetroot feta cheese salad, Red Velvet Beetroot Cake and homemade Nutella wannabe.

Preheat the oven to 160C and set to bake for 40 minutes. Prepare the tins by spraying with vegetable oil. Line the bases with baking parchment and spray once again.

In a large mixing bowl (I used a KitchenAid stand mixer with the flat paddle), whisk up the eggs and sugar for 4 minutes on 6 until they are light and fluffy. You can use a hand mixer or the manual version, but just be prepared to keep on whisking.

Next beat in the grated beetroot, as well as the vanilla seeds from the scraped-out pod.

In a medium bowl, combine all the dry ingredients from white rice flour down to the salt and whisk together using a fork/whisk and then add to the beetroot-egg mixture and beat again until well-combined.

Finally add the soy milk, stir well to make sure that all the elements in the bowl are well introduced and the mixture looks very dark magenta

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and place them in the oven for 35 minutes. Check if done or not by inserting a toothpick. If it comes out clean then you’re done. I seem to need a bit more time and let the cake cook another 5 minutes.

When the cakes are cooked, remove from the oven, un-mould and place on a wire rack to cool. After 10 minutes turn the cake upside down and peel the baking paper and let sit to cool down further.

In the meantime, to start making the Snow Meringue icing: place all the ingredients except the vanilla extract in a big metal mixing bowl over a pan of boiling water. Stir with a clean metal spoon for 2 minutes exactly to dissolve the sugar. When the mixture is warm and the 2 minutes are up, remove the bowl from the heat. Add the vanilla extract in now and beat with a hand-held electric whisk for 9 minutes until cool. The mixture is ready to use when it’s standing up like snow-covered Swiss peaks.

When the cakes are cold, spread the Nutella Wannabe on top of one cake evenly. Then add the other cake on top of it like a sandwich

Cover the whole cake with Snow Meringue icing made in Step 8. Let sit for about 30 more minutes before slicing into it. The cake keeps for 2 days in an airtight container, after that refrigerate the leftover, consumable for 7 days after (if you still have any!)

For a few months now, I have been an active member of an Indonesian Foodie Group on Facebook called #FOODWAR. In that particular community, some active members always post and share the many delicious things they make, every day, anytime of the day. This in effect gave me constant stimulation and some ideas on what I myself should make. This is a brilliant ever-growing source of endless information because often when you are THAT busy, planning what you should eat for dinner or lunch is the last thing you want to do.

Thanks to #FOODWAR, several of recipes were born – seafood rice pilaf, Moloka goat cheese eggless wheat germ muffin, baba ghanoush and many more (recipes will follow in due course).

Thanks to #FOODWAR, too, I finally gave myself enough justification to get an ice cream maker. Day after day, in the middle of Japan’s unbearable Summer, I ogle at several posts made by one fellow FOODWARLORD, Mamiko. She joyfully posted pictures and descriptions of decadent Irish chocolate ice cream, Moloka’s goat cheese toasted macadamia ice cream, intense maccha with roasted hazelnut, dark chocolate coffee with hershey’s cookies n cream white chocolate bits, vanilla bean with salted honey walnut praline, salted caramel with sunflower seeds, and many more. I’ve got to tell you seeing all those deliciousness parading on your computer screen in a 40 Centigrade and humid Tokyo, something then just cracked in your head.

MUST.GET.ICE CREAM MAKER.NOW.

And so I did.

There was a recipe book that came with the ice cream maker, and I’ve tried a few (all to great results). But of course, in a true MyOrangePot spirit, I have got to try something or attempt to make something healthier. I also happened to have a big batch of overripe bananas and chocolate chips that I was going to make into some pancake or banana bread, but ice cream maker won the vote. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home had endless superb suggestions to make eggless ice cream and seemingly full-proof recipes. So here you are, one of my favorite ice creams to date as it churned

Note: Make sure to freeze the ice cream maker canister ahead of time – at least 24 hours

Directions:

In a small prep bowl, mix about 2 Tbsp of the milk with the cornstarch to make a smooth slurry.

In a medium bowl, whisk the cream cheese and salt until smooth

Make an ice bath: fill a large bowl with a bucket of ice and cold water

In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup and vanilla seeds and bean/pod, bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry (from step 1).

Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heatproof spatula (mine is 100 yen from IKEA), until slightly thickened – about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth.

Add puree bananas into the Step 6 mixture

Pour mixture into a 3-4 Liter Ziploc bag and immerse in the ice bath (from Step 3). Let stand, add more ice as necessary until cold, about 30 minutes

When it’s ready to churn the ice cream in the pre-frozen ice-cream maker canister – cut the zip loc and remove the vanilla bean. You might need to fish around a little bit using a fork or some pokey stuff.

Pour the ice cream base into the pre-frozen canister and spin until thick and creamy (usually about 25 minutes)

After about 20 minutes, start working on the chocolate freckles. Use a microwave-proof bowl, put the mixture of chocolate chips and coconut oil in the microwave and work in 30 seconds increments, stir frequently to make sure the chocolate melts into a sauce, make sure it doesn’t burn.

When the ice cream is ready, drizzle the warm chocolate into the opening in the top of the machine and continue churning until it’s completely incorporated (about 2-3 minutes).

Pack the ice cream into a storage container. To avoid freezer burn, press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface and seal with an airtight lid. Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.

When serving, let the container sit on the countertop for about 5 minutes to make the ice cream softer and scoop-friendly.